Donald Trump's campaign spent about $94 million in its final push for the White House, according to new fundraising reports filed Thursday. The Republican continued his campaign-long trend of spending far less than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Her campaign blew through almost $132 million in its closing weeks, according to reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. The latest reports cover Oct. 20 through Nov. 28. Over the course of the primary and general elections, the Trump campaign raised about $340 million. That included $66 million that the billionaire businessman contributed from his own pocket. The Clinton campaign, which...

Meet one of the real 538 electors, Christopher Suprun a Republican from Texas. Suprun has decided to vote for someone other than Donald Trump when he casts his electoral college vote later this month. He believes other electors are right there with him. "At this point there are people who have reached out to me. Again it wouldn’t be my place to name who they are," he said, though he indicated he was talking about Republican electors. "I am confident in saying, at this point," he continued,"I don’t think I will be the only one voting for someone other than...

I know how to be a gracious loser. I could have let it go last week when Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, challenged me to look her in the eye and say she ran a campaign that gave white supremacists a platform. I considered for a split second. I knew you were supposed to be gracious when you come for the post-election forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. But I decided this was a year where normal rules don’t apply. Speaking the truth was more important. “It did. Kellyanne, it did,” I told her. It’s just a fact....

Following President-elect Trump's surprise phone call on Friday with the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the response has been predictable if not disheartening. Academics in D.C. this morning are claiming that, “Trump…doesn’t have clue.” An expert at the University of California added that the call was “impulsive.” Regrettably, my Democratic Party pushed back too. By its measure, Trump demonstrated his “incompetence” and threatened our national security. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) went so far as to say that Trump’s actions might push the nation into war with China. What academics and my party don’t understand is that he’s not interested in starting...

PHILADELPHIA — A judge is rejecting a Green Party-backed effort to allow software experts to inspect Philadelphia's election systems for any evidence that hacking affected the result of Pennsylvania's Nov. 8 presidential election. The judge's refusal Wednesday comes after Philadelphia's election board rejected the idea, too. It is part of a broader effort by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to recount votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states where Republican Donald Trump won narrowly over Democrat Hillary Clinton...

Any member of the Electoral College who wants to vote against Donald Trump but would violate state law by doing so has the support of a Harvard University law professor and a California-based law firm. Larry Lessig has started "The Electors Trust" in order to give free counsel to electors through the firm Durie Tangri. Lessig said his group will also give electors guaranteed anonymity so they can determine if there are enough electors set on keeping Trump from winning the presidency. "It makes no sense to be elector number five who comes out against Trump," Lessig told Politico. "But...

The group of Democratic electors who are trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president have been in contact with Clinton allies. Politico reports: Advocates of the long-shot bid to turn the Electoral College against Donald Trump have been in contact with close allies of Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions, but the Clinton camp — and Clinton herself — have declined to weigh in on the merits of the plan… In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, former Clinton campaign officials declined repeated requests to comment on the Electoral College effort. DNC officials...

Dr. Jill Stein, along with her campaign staff and fellow Green Partiers, came all the way to Trump Tower this morning to blast his “anti-verification campaign” and tell him to stop spreading false information her recount efforts in three swing states. Early Monday morning, the Stein campaign announced that a federal judge in Michigan granted the campaign’s emergency request to immediately start the statewide recount. On Nov. 28, the campaign said Pennsylvanian voters filed recount requests in more than 260 precincts across the state and two days ago that it would file for emergency relief in federal court to demand...

At the risk of "offending" the millions of people who supported and fought for him, Donald Trump should drop Mitt Romney from consideration for Secretary of State, best-selling author and radio host Wayne Allyn Root wrote for Townhall. He added, there are two darkhorse names the President-elect should consider for his administration: Joe Lieberman and Ted Cruz. Root, an early supporter of Trump's, makes the case for Cruz for the Supreme Court vacancy, and offers up 5 reasons why Lieberman would be a solid choice for Secretary of State: •Expand the GOP tent looking ahead to 2020. •Expand the tent...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The Latest on the presidential recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (all times local): 12 p.m. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein says her efforts to force recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are "about ensuring that all votes are counted and that voters can trust the system." Stein made the comments Monday outside of Trump Tower in New York City. The news conference had a circus-like atmosphere, as some of President-elect Donald Trump's supporters heckled Stein...

In 2012, voters across the region liked what they saw in Barack Obama. The president won the popular vote in 24 of the 25 towns in New London County in his bid for re-election, mirroring the support he got in Connecticut and across the country. Four years later, four of those towns had had enough. In Ledyard, Montville, North Stonington and Salem, turnout went up, support for Democrats went down and Donald Trump won hundreds more votes in each town than both Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump's rival in 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. They're not alone — 40...

Pennsylvania court on Saturday accepted the Green Party’s request to end its case seeking a statewide recount — a move that ends any remaining doubt, however slight, about whether Donald Trump is the victor in the 2016 presidential race. Most — including Hillary Clinton’s campaign — expected Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin not to change the result in any of those states. The reality, however, was that the election results would not have changed unless the recounts shifted the states to Clinton in all of those states. With Pennsylvania off the table,...

he Green Party is dropping its lawsuit to request a statewide recount of the election results in Pennsylvania. The Associated Press reported on Saturday that the party said it could not come up with a $1 million bond payment required by the court by Monday, when a hearing was scheduled. A court order filed Saturday called the matter "closed" after it said that petitioners had filed to withdraw the case. The Green Party had questioned whether voting machines had been hacked or manipulated

Green Party candidate Jill Stein is set to hold a rally along with her supporters in front of the Trump Tower in New York on Monday. Stein, who has initiated the process of vote recounts in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania following the 2016 presidential election, made the announcement on Saturday. GOP nominee Donald Trump won presidency on November 8 by flipping the three traditionally blue states, triggering calls for a recount pursued not by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton but by Stein. Trump has vowed to block the efforts by having his lawyer file lawsuits against the move....

County clerks across the state were preparing to start a recount on Friday of the ballots casted in Michigan for the President of the United States. But the count may wait to begin until Tuesday, if it happens at all. After a recount request was filed by Green Party candidate Jill Stein on Wednesday, representatives of the campaign for President-Elect Donald Trump filed an objection to the recount Thursday afternoon, according to a press release from the Michigan Secretary of State office. Michigan Republican Party spokesperson Sarah Anderson confirmed that the party planned to file an objection to the recount...

The almost razor-thin margins in battleground states that elected Donald Trump as the next US president have some observers wondering if Asian American voters might have helped to tip the balance for Hillary Clinton if events had taken a slightly different turn. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Michigan, where on November 28, the state’s election board certified Trump as the winner almost three weeks after the contest by two-tenths of a percentage point, or 47.6% to 47.4%. The margin of 10,704 votes was the closest in Michigan history. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is pressing for yet...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Would a fourth presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton closer to Election Day have changed the outcome? Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri thinks so — and she regrets not asking for one. Palmieri said Clinton did best directly comparing herself with now President-elect Trump. “It was Hillary unfiltered and the clarity of the choice,” she said. If she had asked, the Trump campaign would have agreed — and it wouldn’t have changed anything, said Trump’s deputy campaign manager David Bossie. After a shaky first debate, he said, Mr. Trump only got better and needed less...

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to officially object Thursday to Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s request for a laborious hand-recount of the state’s nearly 4.8 million ballots. Trump was declared the winner of the state’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 10,704 votes on Monday. Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State Office, said the objection would be filed by the end of day Thursday. Stein filed her recount request Wednesday, along with a check for $973,250 to cover the costs to recount ballots in Michigan’s 6,300 precincts. Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Wednesday...

Since Hillary Clinton was defeated in her second run for the presidency, many have assumed that she’ll finally be going away for good. If they think that, though, then they don’t know the Clintons. Not only is Hillary not leaving the public eye, she’s already considering another run for the White House in 2020… or so the rumors go. Sources say that Hillary’s recount efforts are just part of her long-term plan to run again in four years. And the person floating this idea is Ron Fournier, member of the White House Press Corps. (TWEETS-AT-LINK) Does Hillary think that she...

President-elect Donald Trump ran on a platform of being extremely tough on immigration. One of his vows to voters was that he’d get rid of President Barack Obama’s executive actions, which could include those that provided protections to young undocumented immigrants from being deported. One Republican lawmaker and Trump critic is now prepping legislation that would keep those protections in place in case Trump moves forward with his pledge. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said he is working with both Democrats and Republicans in order to protect immigrants, known as Dreamers, who willingly came forward to give their information in...

LANSING, Mich. – Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Wednesday requested a full hand recount of Michigan’s presidential vote, making it the third state where she’s asked for another look at a race narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump. Stein had previously requested recounts of the presidential votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. President-elect Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast in Michigan, but Stein alleges that irregularities and the possibility that vote scanning devices could have been hacked call the results into question....

President Obama says he wasn’t all that surprised by Donald Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election. “So I think the odds of Donald Trump winning were always around 20 percent,” Obama said in a Rolling Stone interview published Tuesday. “That [doesn't] seem like a lot, but one out of five is not that unusual. It's not a miracle." Obama spoke to the magazine’s publisher, Jann Wenner, the day after Election Day, when the level of shock at the White House seemed very high. Dozens of stunned staffers, many of whom had tears in their eyes, stood in the Rose...

Clinton Foundation officials have yet to disclose the charity’s third quarter 2016 donors — which ended September 30 — thus insuring voters won’t know who contributed in the final months leading up to the Nov. 8 presidential election. Also late is the 2015 990 tax return for the former president’s charity. The Clinton Foundation pledges on its website that “for maximum transparency … we update our donor web-page each quarter that we receive the contributions.” But officials there have yet to post the latest quarterly donor report and they’ve offered no explanation. The third quarter period is from July 1...

Electoral officials for the state of Michigan certified Monday that Donald Trump won by 10,704 votes out of nearly 4.8 million to claim all of its 16 electoral votes. Green Party nominnee Jill Stein said she would continue with her petitions for vote recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, although it would have taken a reversal in all three states for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to reach the presidency. Questions raise as to how Stein got so quickly all her new funding, which largely surpasses her total campaign expenditures. There are leads pointing at billionaire George Soros. Although Donald Trump's victory...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump and his administration (all times EST): 2:17 p.m. Former Vice President Dan Quayle is among those visiting Trump Tower on Tuesday. Quayle entered the Manhattan high-rise that's home to President-elect Donald Trump accompanied by Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the incoming commander in chief....

Green Party's Jill Stein needed thousands of volunteers to help with a voter-initiated recount of Pennsylvania's election results. But, officials are not seeing it. In a video Sunday, Stein asked volunteers to print, complete and get notarized affidavits in an attempt to force an election recount in Pennsylvania. Election officials from around the state said they had received some calls about affidavits but not the thousands Stein needs. While Stein said volunteers were needed to submit their documentation by Monday, Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, has said the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Nov. 21....

Updated 5:30 p.m. — As of close of business on Monday, the Philadelphia Board of Elections had received petitions from 74 (out of more than 1,600) divisions. Updated 3:45 p.m. — Jill Stein officially filed a lawsuit in a bid to force all of Pennsylvania’s votes to be recounted. Jill Stein’s effort to recount presidential votes in three swing states already appears to be sputtering in Philadelphia. While Stein, a former presidential candidate, has raised millions of dollars and filed for a recount in Wisconsin, the process in Pennsylvania is much more complicated. Candidates cannot file for a recount themselves....

Updated. President-elect Donald Trump, who was certified Monday as the winner of Michigan's 16 electoral votes, could contest a request for a recount of Michigan's nearly 4.8 million votes in the Nov. 8 general election. If he does, he could stretch the latest drama in a stunning election cycle well into December and close to the Electoral College vote. In the certified results, Trump led Michigan by 10,704 votes — 2,279,543 compared with 2,268,839 for Clinton. Trump hasn't said that he will take the step of contesting the recount, but he has been critical of the effort by Green Party...

By Election Day, ambitious Democrats had already resigned themselves to an eight-year wait for their chance in the national spotlight. Hillary Clinton was an overwhelming favorite against Donald Trump and, assuming she won, running a primary challenge against her in four years would be a fool’s errand. Then Clinton lost. Although this most stunning upset in modern presidential history has produced (and will produce) a thousand aftershocks, one of the most unlikely and important is that the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 is now open. That opening is made all the more remarkable by the fact that there is simply...

Jill Stein posted to her Jill2016 website that she had raised enough money to “file” for a recount in Pennsylvania. However, the Green Party candidate left out some key details about the filing of recounts in Pennsylvania that many of her supporters likely would have wanted to know before donating. For example, candidates cannot file a direct request for a recount in the state and instead must appeal the election in court. (TWEET-AT-LINK) According to the Recount 2016 initiative and donation page posted by failed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign launched an effort to...

Ohio congressman Tim Ryan is campaigning to replace Nancy Pelosi as the House minority leader. In an interview with the Washington Post, he argued that Democrats need a strategy for appealing to voters that doesn't rely on President Obama's personal popularity. “If we don’t have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, we can’t win elections. That is an unsustainable model. He can’t run again, so it’s not even like we can say, well, every four years we’ll win.” Indeed, Barack Obama can't run again ... OR CAN HE??? Such is the question posed by this Change.org petition, which...

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised nearly $5 million to fund efforts to push for a recount in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This has led to speculation over what Stein hopes to gain from a potential recount or if she is being used by billionaire investor George Soros or Bill and Hillary Clinton. ‘Stacy on the Right’ Show Host Stacy Washington weighed in on the potential factors driving the push for a recount. “I saw something interesting this morning on ‘The Hill’ by writer Mary Chastain and she talked about the big deal with Donald Trump saying...

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has increased now to 2.1 million votes and counting. She has received more votes than any other white or female candidate in the history of the United States. Indeed, Donald Trump may have garnered more votes than any other Republican in history, but he’s getting trounced in the popular vote. By the time counting has finished, Clinton’s 2+ million vote lead over Donald Trump will be a bigger vote lead than 28 eventual Presidents had over their opponents. It’s not exactly a landslide (Obama beat McCain by 9 million votes, and Romney by...

Joe Scarborough argued Wednesday that Donald Trump is benefiting from low expectations. During a "Morning Joe" panel, the MSNBC host implied that President Barack Obama disappointed many voters who had high expectations for his presidency. "Obama came in as black Jesus. I don't want to come in as redneck Jesus, if I'm a president of the United States. You want to come in like Ronald Reagan where people underestimate you," Scarborough said. Scarborough also argued that left-leaning writers had "done Donald Trump a favor" by highlighting support for Trump from white supremacists, including a video that showed members of a...

COLUMBIA -- President-elect Donald Trump is picking South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to become his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, The Post and Courier has learned. The move, expected Wednesday, continues the steep political rise of the daughter of Indian immigrants that started six years ago when the Bamberg native was elected as South Carolina’s first female and minority governor. The planned nomination to the cabinet-level post, confirmed by multiple sources with knowledge of the decision, is likely to raise questions about Haley’s qualifications for a major foreign policy role since she has little diplomatic experience as state lawmaker...

On the list of surprising visitors calling on president-elect Donald Trump last week, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas ranks right up there with alleged Secretary of State candidate Mitt Romney. While Romney who called Trump a “phony” and talked openly about derailing his candidacy during the campaign had an actual job attached to the meeting with his former nemesis on Saturday, Cruz’s visit was billed as more of a drop-by. It’s true that after the name-calling between Cruz and Trump (who tagged him “Lyin’ Ted’) during the primary campaign; after Trump’s derogatory comments about Cruz’s wife; after Trump’s suggestion that...

The rude ambush of Vice-President elect Mike Pence by a cast member of the Broadway Musical, “Hamilton”, has outraged a large cross-section of the American citizenry. The actor expressed alarm and anxiety that the Trump-Pence Administration will not protect and defend “a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations”, and uphold their inalienable rights. The liberal left likes to preach that there should be a “conversation” between both sides to settle our differences. But when a cheap shot is taken in a venue where a response is not practicable, THAT AIN’T CONVERSATION, BUDDY, THAT’S “BULLYING”....

Most Democrats want their party leaders to stand up to incoming President Donald Trump rather than work with him, says a new survey that reflects a deeply divided nation. Nearly two-thirds – or 65 percent – of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters agreed that congressional Democrats should “stand up” to the president-elect on issues important to Democratic supporters, “even if it means less gets done in Washington,” the Pew Research Center poll found. Just 32 percent want party leaders, who are now in the minority in the House of Representatives and Senate, to work with Trump if it means disappointing Democrats....

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he wants President-elect Trump to select a "mainstream" candidate to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Asked by NBC on Sunday whether he was comfortable filibustering any Trump nominee for the court, Schumer dodged answering the question directly. "I hope that President Trump picks a mainstream candidate," Schumer said. "A mainstream candidate is somebody you may not agree with on every issue, but basically believes in precedent." NBC's Chuck Todd interrupted Schumer and asked, "What does that mean? Can he nominate somebody in your mind...

If Republicans could merge the two approaches, they could continue to win demographically changing swing states. Two of the most consequential elections of 2016 took place among the same voters in the same state. Pennsylvania effectively put Donald Trump over the top of the 270 electoral-college votes needed to win the presidency, and Pat Toomey’s reelection helped secure a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate for at least another two years. Both of these results were remarkable. Trump succeeded in a state where Bob Dole, George W. Bush (twice), John McCain, and Mitt Romney all failed. Toomey won a second...

Former Senator, Democratic candidate for president and Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, Jim Webb, says that in recent years the Democratic Party has grown more and more hostile towards the white working class. In this interview with FNC's Tucker Carlson, Webb says that, "in the last eight years, the Democratic Party has moved into interest group politics and in many cases white working people have become the whipping post." JIM WEBB: The base of the Democratic party used to be working people, regardless of race, ethnic, or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, et cetera. That was a Roosevelt agenda....

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Grassroots campaigns have sprung up around the country to try to persuade members of the Electoral College to do something that has never been done in American history - deny the presidency to the clear Election Day winner. Activists are circulating online petitions and using social media in hopes of influencing Republican electors to cast their ballots for someone other than President-elect Donald Trump and deprive him of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the next occupant of the White House. "Yes, I think it's a longshot, but I also think we're living in...

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray has been elected by the Democratic caucus to serve as assistant Democratic leader, the third-ranking position in Senate Democratic leadership. Murray, a Democrat from Seattle, was elected Wednesday. In this post, Murray will work with Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader, to shape the Democratic agenda and strategy, and will play a critical role in implementing it on and off the Senate floor with the rest of the leadership team and caucus. Murray has served as the conference secretary, the fourth-ranking position, since 2006. “We have a tough road ahead of us with Republicans in control of...

A senior adviser to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has come under fire after posting a photo on Facebook that included his sister holding up a sign that said "F--- Whiteness," The New York Daily News reported Thursday. Lincoln Restler posted a photo earlier this week of his parents and sister. His father held a sign that said "Black + Brown + Immigrant Lives Matter," and his mother held a sign that said "Love." His sister's was more profane. Restler said he took the photo when he and his mother "took to the streets to stand in solidarity...

Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan hasn’t decided whether he will challenge Nancy Pelosi as House Democrats’ leader, but he said in an interview Wednesday night that if someone were to make such a move, it would have to come in the next 24 hours. That would mean he’d have to make a decision to take on the powerful, longtime leader by Thursday. “Somebody’s got to make a decision, I would think, in the next 24 hours or so if they want to have a realistic shot at winning,” Ryan told RealClearPolitics. There have been consistent rumblings among some House Democrats since...

We’re finally done with Election 2016 and to almost everyone’s surprise the new President-elect does not wear a pantsuit. How did Donald Trump pull off the biggest political upset in modern history? Does anyone really know for sure why and how it happened and how nobody saw it coming? Here are the reasons in my opinion, anyway, in no particular order. The email scandal that continued to dog Hillary finally bit her in the ass completely when FBI director James Comey found the Weiner-grams that linked back to her and her lack of good judgment. Comey ultimately wussed out on...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday it would be an “outrage” if President-elect Donald Trump followed through with threats to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. “It would be almost beyond comprehension to think that a new president would be involved in the prosecution of his opponent who ended up getting some 2 million more votes than he did,” Sanders told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “It would completely divide this country. It would be an outrage,” he said. “I would hope very, very, very much that Mr. Trump...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a statewide emergency call-in system today to deal with a burst of racially and religiously-motivated incidents following the incendiary election of Donald Trump to the presidency. The Democratic governor rolled out the toll-free number—(888) 392-3644—in Rochester this afternoon, and encouraged New Yorkers who think they may have been the victim of a bias crime to ring. Since Trump’s shocking victory one week ago on a fiercely anti-immigration platform, spray-painted swastikas have proliferated at college campuses like the New School and the State University of New York at Geneseo, in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclave of Crown Heights...

Donald Trump won Tuesday’s presidential election. But many liberals and progressives have begun clinging to one faint hope that he could still be stopped — through the Electoral College. Tuesday’s vote was technically not to make Trump president, but only to determine who the 538 electors in various states across the country will be. It is those electors who will cast the votes that legally elect the president on December 19. In modern times, the casting of electoral votes has been a purely ceremonial occasion where the results in the states have been rubber-stamped. But one idea spreading on left-leaning...